In today's information age, computers and computer peripherals are often internet worked over a communication network. The communication network includes a number of network nodes that interoperate to route protocol messages within the communication network. These network nodes typically run various routing protocols in order to determine forwarding paths for routing protocol messages within the communication network.
When a network node fails, the other network nodes need to route the protocol messages around the failed network node. The network nodes typically rely on “keep-alive” messages to determine whether a particular network node is operational. Each node periodically sends keep-alive messages to its neighbors. A network node may consider a particular neighbor to be operational as long as the neighbor is sending keep-alive messages.
Therefore, each network node receives keep-alive messages from its neighbors. The processing of keep-alive messages can be computationally intensive, especially if the network node has many neighbors.